Stephen Fry - asked What He Would Say If He Met God

ebia said:

It's not up to me to propose any possibilities.
It's up to a logical argument to show that it covers everything.

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Nah-ah. Play fair. Your claim is that there are other possibilities. You made the claim, you need to support it or retract it.

The trouble with such terse language that it ends up being equivocated.
Does "able but not willing" mean "doesn't want to" or "has some reason not to (so far)"

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So let's tackle them:

"Doesn't want to" - I'd be interested to see how that could be anything other than malevolent.

"Has some reason not to" - argument from the Greater Good. That doesn't fly unless you can demonstrate what the greater good is. Since there is no biblical or evidential support for it I'm REALLY interested in your response.

Danny777 said:

You appear to accept the presence of 'evil'. Maybe you could provide an explanation for the existence of 'evil'? How do you define it?

Tony - this is the 3rd time I've asked you this - it's very easy to pick the bones out of my responses. It would be nice to get a straight answer out of you...

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You are avoiding the question I asked, by redefining disease as evil, and then saying that God has no control over this. This still doesn't work. A disease isn't "evil". It is simply another type of organism that causes harm to other organisms, like pretty much all organisms.


I'm not even sure that I have a definition of evil to work from. Ian's "lack of good" isn't really any good, as I could do an action that is lacking good, but not evil.

If we use the definition of doing harm to others, then the better question would be "why do humans tend not to harm each other". After all, most animals and plants harm one another. This is where we would get into both the evolution of empathy, and look at other animals that exhibit empathy. We could also look at how socities work and do both a sociology and anthropology degree. You could spend years doing this, and I am no expert in these fields.

If you are actually insterested in the real reason these things exist, then you will not understand it unless you put your bible down and do some study of biology, archaeology, anthropology, economics and sociology.

Bungle_Bear said:

Nah-ah. Play fair. Your claim is that there are other possibilities.

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Perhaps I was unclear - to be logical proof it needs to show that all possibilities are covered.

"Has some reason not to" - argument from the Greater Good. That doesn't fly unless you can demonstrate what the greater good is.

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No I dont.
To be logical proof the proof needs to deal with that; either to show that there are no possibilities or to list them all and deal with them; or to somehow deal with them all generally.

The "proof" is being put up as an absolute proof; as something logically watertight, and it is not.

It was this exact question, more than anything else, which led me as a teenager to conclude that the Christian God does not exist, and soon afterwards to reject the concept of all Gods. It was as obvious to me then as it is now that the idea of a benevolent loving creator was completely incompatible with the 'creation' we can see on a daily basis. The suggestion that a kind creator could develop a world in which his creations need to eat each other alive to survive is quite clearly flawed. Nature just does not care about our feelings, however much we would like it to, illustrated yet again this weekend by the man tragically washed into the sea while scattering his sister's ashes. This of course does not rule out the existence of a benign or malevolent creator, but few people seem keen on worshipping such a God.

And interestingly, it's not just the likes of me, and Fry, and Epicurus who think this way. The problem of evil is a question regularly brought up by children, such as the girl who recently stumped the Pope, and my 8 year old Godson who recently asked me why God put his friend in a wheelchair from birth. "A question which does not have an answer" said the Pope, though of course religions the world over have for centuries been engaging in some incredible mental gymnastics in order to come up with an answer they felt they could get away with.

Islam will tell you that all bad things are simply Allah testing your faith. The 2 month old baby dying of malaria is, we are to believe, either having its own faith tested (seems harsh on a baby), or this is a quite brutal and horrific way of testing the faith of its parents (slightly reminiscent of Isaac, but one step further?). Christianity will tell you it's a result of our forefathers eating a naughty apple, after having been instructed not to (why did the apple even exist in the first place? I call entrapment!). Other religions give us bad Gods, engaged in a celestial struggle against an omnipotent good God (how does one fight that which is omnipotent?). None of this makes even a shred of sense.

My Mum recently confirmed that I did ask her about this problem as a young child, so I guess the years of Sunday School kept the wolf from the door until I was old enough, and confident enough, to make up my own mind. As soon as I had, the whole thing suddenly seemed so crystal clear; that such a philosophy was all the creation of man. The years I have spent away from inculcation, and from societal pressure, have served to make my conclusion even more convincing.

One popular challenge, from those who believe in a creator, goes something along the lines of "well, then how do you explain bad things?". When you feel you have to shoehorn the idea of agency into nature then the problem of evil abounds, but when you don't need things to be part of some overall plan, then everything becomes so much more straightforward. The flesh eating bug exists because it adapted to take advantage of a niche. It does not exist to test anyone, or to punish anyone. It simply exists because that is what it evolved into, and it is successful. If you stand by the sea on a stormy day then you run the risk of being hit by a big wave, and whether or not you are scattering your sister's ashes is completely irrelevant to your odds. Nature was not designed for us, and doesn't care about us, and the second you accept that, you instantly rid yourself of the need to perform the mental gymnastics which believers must attempt.

So when a non-believer states, as Fry did, that they would like believers to realise what they have realised, much of it is probably motivated by the desire for others to experience how refreshing it is to accept things as they are, and to no longer have to be concerned with the problem of evil, and with the type of question for which the Pope says there is no answer.

Fry going on about bone cancer again (has he lost someone to this disease?) reminded me of this video, which seems relevant:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v83X9-oJ-w

Why not intelligent "desire"?

God created "evil" too,

But one must start from that this World is the lowest of realms, as it were.

God wants us to transform this "lowest of low" into a dwelling Place for Himself.

God created evil not that we would choose it but, we could choose it.

If evil did not exist, this World would not be the lowest of Worlds/realms, so to say.

For what is evil if not lack of holiness, yet it is as a Shell which encapsulates holiness.

What is darkness if not lack of light,

What is evil if not lack of good,

If the Shell is not peeled away, goodness, holiness, Godliness will not be revealed.

One can say, Esau represents evil, Jakob represents good

The pregnancy was difficult, for they were struggling with eachother.

It was not so much that Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden but that the Divine presence withdrew to higher realms.

But it ultimately is "His desire" that we draw His presence back down by peeling away the Shell and thereby making the World holier, into a Place where He can dwell.

ebia said:

Perhaps I was unclear - to be logical proof it needs to show that all possibilities are covered.

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No it doesn't. It simply needs to cover any possibility that you throw at it.

No I dont.

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Actually you do. You cannot simply claim "there is a greater good, so you are wrong." I can counter simply by saying "no there isn't, so I'm right." If you cannot demonstrate what that greater good is then you have no argument. And if I can demonstrate that the greater good is either not a greater good or does not require the "evil" being allowed, then again you have no argument.

To be logical proof the proof needs to deal with that; either to show that there are no possibilities or to list them all and deal with them; or to somehow deal with them all generally.

The "proof" is being put up as an absolute proof; as something logically watertight, and it is not.

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A logical proof does not need to demonstrate there are no other possibilities (you cannot prove a negative), it simply needs to address any possibility which is thrown at it. You claim there are other possibilities, but you fail to list them. It is not down to me to second guess you. If you think the argument fails to address a possibility you need to detail what that possibility is. That's how you disprove the argument.